


Born of Ash and Storm

by IndigoRiot



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Angst and Feels, Civil War, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Long winded, Modded Skyrim, POV Alternating, Redemption, Reluctant Dovahkiin | Dragonborn, Slow Burn, Sorry Not Sorry, Survivor Guilt, Warnings May Change, an excuse to write about Kaidan, dragonborn with a grudge, i dont even know, kaidan 2, protective Kaidan, slow plot, will we complete the main quest?, yet another playthrough
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29287899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoRiot/pseuds/IndigoRiot
Summary: He was a bounty hunter with a troubled past, and she... well, she had a grudge to nurse and clung to it as though it were her lifeline.With the country at war, the dragons returning and the world aflame, the divines had somehow seen fit to leave the fate of it all in their hands. As it turns out, they couldn't have chosen better - and they certainly couldn't have chosen any worse. Battles, bloodshed, and winged-beasts in the sky, this is the story of Kaidan, First of the Dragonguard, and Estrith Fey, the Last Dragonborn.Updates: 8th, 18th, and 28th of the month
Relationships: Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn & Kaidan, Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Kaidan, Kaidan (Elder Scrolls)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 10





	1. On the Road

**On the Road**

Kaidan hitched awake – as he did every morning – to the smell of smoke, the taste of blood, and the high-pitched keens of screaming. It was a few moments before the cold air, the rough furs, and the golden sunlight filtering between the tent flaps, grounded him back into the present day.

He’d once fooled himself into thinking – hoping – that the memories would blunt with time. But the last two years stood as a lesson harshly taught and sorely learned. Each and every sin he was guilty of would surely remain just as sharp as the blade he’d committed them upon, up until the day he died. He would never forget.

He didn’t deserve to forget.

Kaidan rubbed his face and sat up on his bedroll, wondering how he always managed to wake up feeling more aches and pains than he had the night before. An unsolicited thought at the back of his mind stirred up echoes of something sweet that would lift the soreness from his body, help him soar away. Wouldn’t even be that hard to get his hands on… all he’d need to do was –

Nope. None of that.

Irritably, Kaidan tossed those thoughts away, crawled out from his tent, and stretched out his long limbs beneath the rising sun. All he needed was a warm tavern, a hot meal, and a good ale.

Bruma, last port of call before the Jerall mountains, lay three days behind; Kaidan looked up and on toward the broken, white-capped peaks of the mountain range, a long-forgotten familiarity stirring in his chest. Homesick was the closest word Kaidan could come up with to describe the pull in his chest, even though he’d never really had any place to call home. But some of his fondest memories were of his time with Brynjar in the wilds of Skyrim. On those darker nights when he found himself most in need of… well, it was to Skyrim his mind wandered most in distraction of that need.

How long had it been now?

Must’ve been seven or eight years since he last made the crossing into Skyrim after Brynjar’s death. He hadn’t found what he was looking for back then, and to be completely honest with himself, Kaidan wasn’t sure if he’d find it now. Hell, he didn’t even know what it was he was looking for. But after years of wallowing in resentment, feeding his anger with one poor decision after the next, and running from…

Well, he’d decided enough was enough.

Kaidan turned and looked down upon the twinkling, snow-covered rooftops of Bruma, the last sight of civilisation he’d see in a while. He wagered he had another couple days before he hit the border, and from there another week or so of trudging along mountain roads until he reached Helgen, with nothing but the odd village or two on the way and the fresh mountain air. He’d set up camp in a sheltered outcropping a little way back from the road, but the cold winds were bracing, even here.

Kaidan took a deep breath. Already, his head felt a little clearer.

Once he’d packed up camp and found the road again, Kaidan settled into the familiar rhythm of travel. There was a simplicity to the road he never found elsewhere: the world and all its problems reduced, for a time, to the pack on his back, the beat of his steps, and the wind on his face. It was a snippet of a simple life, and Kaidan resolved to enjoy it while he could. He stopped every now and then to rest his feet, roll the knot between his shoulders out, and take a swing from his waterskin. He saw an elk off the path at high sun – majestic thing, all pride and grace and massive antlers – and managed to snipe a hare for his lunch without too much trouble. All in all, the day passed uneventfully and, as the light changed and day began to fade, he felt something bordering on peaceful. Maybe even a little happiness, for the first time in… well, a long time.

That was, until Kaidan rounded a bend in the road and saw flames on the horizon. Then all those fleeting flickers of good feeling died in the wind, because _of course_.

He knew it was too good to last.

“Oh, no – no, bad dogs, bad! Shoo, shoo! Oh, do go away - you’re supposed to be going away – oh, why isn’t this working?!”

Kaidan jogged up the path to the source of the commotion to find a squeaky little blonde man beset by three wolves, haphazardly casting flames in their general direction. One wolf pounced a little too close for comfort, eliciting a high-pitched shriek from the man as he jumped and cast another flame, completely missing the wolf and setting his own boot on fire.

“Oh, mouldering mudcrabs!” he cursed, trying to waft out the flames on his foot. 

Kaidan loosed an arrow at another wolf who’d chosen that moment to try and take a bite out of his unguarded neck. It yelped and fell to the ground, wounded and writhing around in pain. The remaining two wolves turned to bare their fangs at Kaidan. He shot one of them right in its open mouth; the arrow came through the other side of its head, killing it instantly. The last wolf took one look at the fallen members of its pack and howled before departing from the path with its tail between its legs.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you,” the cried the little man, taking a step forward. Kaidan took a step back. “I don’t know who you are, stranger, but you’ve saved me – I really must repay you! I should – oh! Oh no, I simply must put out these flames!”

Kaidan watched warily as the man – some Imperial noble or other, judging by his accent and ridiculous clothing – continued his attempts to bat out the flames (“ow, ow - hot!”). When that didn’t work, he resorted to making noises and flailing around instead.

“…What the bloody ‘ell are you doing?”

“The fire isn’t listening!” the stranger panicked.

Kaidan began to wonder if he’d ever seen such incompetence in his life, but came up blank. What in all of Tamriel what someone like _that_ doing all the way out here?

“Oh, for the love of – c’mere!” Kaidan growled. He strode over to the little Imperial and, with his free hand, picked him up by the collar of his robes and tossed him gracelessly (“oof!”) into a nearby snowdrift. Then he kicked up some snow with the toe of his boot to put out the flames. “Bloody mages, causing havoc,” Kaidan spat, “playin’ around with forces best left alone.”

“Um, I’m not actually a mage, per se,” the man on the ground protested. He lifted his foot in the air, turning it this way and that. “Ah, thank you again, that’s so much better,” he continued, rising cheerfully to his feet and brushing the snow off his coat. “Although I do know some magic – which, turns out, is a lot easier in theory than in practise! Anyway, that’s quite beside the point. I’m not just a mage, I am an academic. A scientist, scholar – amateur wizard, yes – and something of a musician, too! Though, I suppose that’s more of a hobby than anything else,” he trailed off. Then he shook his head and held out a hand in greeting. “The name’s Lucien. Lucien Flavius.”

Kaidan eyed his hand suspiciously. “Kaidan,” he grunted eventually, shouldering his bow and ignoring the hand.

Lucien faltered only slightly before withdrawing his hand and continuing. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Kaidan. And I do mean that – despite your manners – I’m not sure where I’d be if you hadn’t arrived when you did!”

“Still on fire, probably… might’a been better off for everyone else too, I’d wager,” Kaidan muttered beneath his breath.

Lucien hadn’t caught it. He was still too busy talking. “ – I’ll simply have to take it up with the head librarian when I return. _Herbane’s Bestiary_ specifically said that wolves take fright with flame, so I thought it would be a good idea to – ”

“ – Set yerself on fire?” Kaidan scoffed.

Lucien looked like he was about to take offence, but any words he had died in his throat as Kaidan took his hunting knife to finish off the first, still whimpering wolf.

“Eww. That’s a little bit unpleasant,” Lucien grimaced, stepping away from the growing puddle of blood in the snow.

It seemed a waste to leave the wolves on the mountain side, but Kaidan didn’t have the time or resources to preserve the pelts until he reached Helgen, and he wasn’t all that keen on dragging around a couple of kills for the better part of a week. So, he sheathed his knife and turned to leave.

“Uhm, where – where are you going?” Lucien stammered, hurrying to match Kaidan’s much larger steps, then doubling back to retrieve the pack he’d dropped at the side of the road. Kaidan vaguely wondered how he managed to avoid setting that alight, too. “Don’t you want your reward?” he called.

“Bit o’ peace and quiet’ll be reward enough,” Kaidan sniped. Stupid mage.

“Sorry! I didn’t quite catch that,” Lucien puffed as he caught up. “Phew. Is it just me, or is the air already getting thinner? Anyway, I –”

“Look – Lucien, is it?”

“ _Lucien_ ,” Lucien replied.

“…Yeah, that’s what I said. Lucien,”

“ _Lucien_ ,” Lucian repeated. “Not Loo-shun –”

“Oh, whatever! Just bugger off, will ya? I don’t need no stinking reward for stickin’ an arrow into a couple o’ wolves, alright? Just leave me be,” he grunted, starting up the path again. Not too long ago, Kaidan wouldn’t have hesitated in bloodying the nose of an annoyance like _Loo-see-un_ , and he was definitely imagining the act with no small amount of pleasure. But he was a different man now – a better man. Or at least, he was trying to be. So, with some difficulty, Kaidan unclenched his fist and tried his best not to act upon it.

“Are you by any chance hoping to cross the border into Skyrim?” Lucien asked, trotting alongside him.

Kaidan took a deep breath. “…And what if I was?”

“Ah, excellent! I assume you have all the relevant paperwork, then. Hmm, I wonder if –”

“Wait… paperwork?” Kaidan asked, grinding to a halt mid-stride. Lucien looked quite relieved to catch a break from hurrying along on his little legs to match Kaidan’s pace. “What paperwork?”

“All the relevant documents to pass the Imperial checkpoint, obviously,” Lucien replied airily. “Is that to say you don’t?”

“Just what are you trying to sell?” Kaidan accused. “Never needed any bloody papers to cross the border before.”

Lucien rummaged in his pack. “Well, that was probably before the rebellion started heating up.”

“Bah – Ulfric Stormcloak’s been cryin’ ‘independence’ since I were a lad, and his grumblings never got him anywhere in years. What changed?”

“I take it you haven’t heard that a meeting of all the Nordic rulers, er Kings –”

“Jarls,” Kaidan supplied irritably.

“Yes, Jarls – thank you – was proposed by none other than High King Torygg himself?”

That gave Kaidan pause. “Really? When was that?”

“Earlier this month,” Lucien said, with all the intrigue of a gossiping inn-keep. “3rd of Sun's Dawn, to be precise. Ruffled a lot of feathers back in the Imperial City. My mother was a Captain in the Legion back in the day, retired now, of course – but she’s still privy to all the news and, let me tell you, they are _not_ _pleased_. Although, they’re trying to keep it hush hush and nip it in the bud. It’s one thing for a couple of disgruntled Jarls to complain, but another thing entirely for the High King of Skyrim to formally entertain those complaints.”

“Aye,” Kaidan nodded darkly.

“Anyway, a letter was sent out to every hold in Skyrim bearing the Emperor’s insignia. Mother said it was a reminder to the Jarls of the horrors of the war, terms of the White-Gold Concordat, and the importance of our ongoing relationship with the Aldmeri Dominion. Just this week!”

“That’s a veiled threat if ever there was one,” Kaidan voiced. “Can’t imagine it’ll do much to quiet Ulfric.”

“Indeed!” Lucien agreed, continuing to rummage around. “It’s all very exciting. I can’t be sure if the message has gotten to any of the Jarls yet, but I do know that security at the borders is being tightened and no one’s allowed in or out without a writ-of-passage – at least, not on the Imperial side of the checkpoint. I can’t be sure what lies in wait on the other – ah, finally, here it is!” Lucien exclaimed, straightening up and brandishing a scroll.

Kaidan took it in his hands and turned it over. Looked like any other official scroll to him; weighty and expensive parchment sealed with a red ribbon and wax seal.

“Look’s like I’ve picked a bad time to return home then,” Kaidan sighed, handing the writ back to Lucien. He dropped his pack on the floor and rubbed his face.

So much for taking the straight road. Now he’d have to trek for miles to find another way in. Perhaps he’d go west to Elinhir and take the road north from there; the Hammerfell-Skyrim border probably wouldn’t be as heavily manned, nor as bureaucratic. But that would add weeks to his journey of walking alone, not to mention picking up contracts to keep coin in his pocket along the way. Gods damn it, why did nothing in his life ever go smoothly?

“Well, not necessarily. Look,” Lucien said, eyeing an unhappy Kaidan contemplatively. “I have something of a proposition for you.”

“Oh aye?” Kaidan grunted. “An’ what’d that be?”

“Well, I can’t help but notice that you seem to be… how can I put this?” he pondered, tapping his chin. “Better acquainted, shall I say, with the less savoury side of things. And also, that you have a very big sword. And red eyes, which, by the way is an incredibly rare genetic trait. I can’t say I’ve ever seen –”

“Just get on with it, will ya! What’d’ya want?”

Lucien startled, jumping about a foot in the air. “Okay, okay – sorry! Right, starting over. I’m travelling to Skyrim on an expedition – academic, mainly. From everything I’ve read, the province sounds simply fascinating! The flora, the fauna, the ruins – both Dwemer and Nordic!" he swooned. "The architecture, the politics, the –”

“Is this supposed to be you getting on with it?” Kaidan interrupted, folding his arms.

“Sorry we can’t all be as blunt and straight to the point as you. Look, I’m not much of a fighter,” Lucien hurried, seeing the dangerous flash in Kaidan’s eye. Blunt? He’d show this incessant little man blunt in a moment. “I mean, I can’t even begin to express how much of not-a-fighter I am. I know a few spells and I can just about swing a sword, but in any sort of combat I really am useless.”

“You don’t say…” Kaidan raised an eyebrow and gestured at Lucien’s charred boot.

“ _That_ was an accident,” Lucien said, turning pink. Then he sighed sadly, “Look. Skyrim’s no place for a – a ‘milk-drinker’ like me. I know I won’t last five minutes on my own once I cross the border –”

“If you make it that far at all –”

“But perhaps that’s where we can help each other out?”

“…You want a bodyguard,” Kaidan concluded.

“I’d like to tag along with you – if that’s alright,” Lucien said hopefully, twiddling the ribbon on his writ. “I’ll make sure my papers get us both through that checkpoint, and you can make sure I don’t end up eaten by a wolf, or anything else we find along the way. And, of course, I’ll compensate you most handsomely for putting up with me.”

Handsomely? The sell-sword in Kaidan began instantly began counting coin. “How much are we talking?”

“Hmm, shall we say, three hundred septims up front?” Lucien offered. Kaidan’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “After that, I can top you up every time I find something valuable to my research. No obligations save that you take me with you and, er – and keep me alive wherever possible!” he finished with a nervous laugh.

Three hundred in gold... that was coin enough to cover bed-and-board for a month or more. He could lay off the bounties for a while and do some real digging into his past, maybe even get a step closer to finding some answers. Just how loaded was this silly little man?

“Reckon it’d be far easier t’just rob ya,” Kaidan said simply.

Lucien looked a little taken aback by the casual threat but persisted, nonetheless. “Now, there’s a chance I’m wrong, but, if you were going to rob me and leave me for dead, I kind of think you would have done it by now.”

“Might still be mulling it over,” he retorted.

“Yes, well, don’t take too long. We don’t have all day,” Lucien complained, eyeing the skyline. The horizon was awash with molten light, heralding another blood-red dusk.

Kaidan sighed. He loved a bit of easy coin as much as the next man, but… he didn’t want to be beholden to anyone or have their life on his hands. The was already blood enough on his to last a lifetime. Better off cutting ties as soon as, rather than dragging anything out and tempting fate. Besides, Kaidan definitely did not want an annoying, chatty little noble traipsing around Skyrim after him, setting everything alight.

“Alright,” Kaidan said eventually. “Here’s what we’ll do. Call it ‘hundred, and I’ll take y’across the border to the nearest town – Helgen, most likely. But we’ll have to part ways there. I don’t have time to babysit you while you do yer… research, or whatever. I’ve business of me own to take care of and you’ll probably find it – well, as _you_ said. Less savoury.”

“Oh, I see,” Lucien said, his face losing some of its cheer. But he soon waved the disappointment off and grinned. “Well, alright then! Across the border it is – I’m sure we’ll have a good little adventure along the way.”

Lucien rummaged through his pack again and produced a singular large coin. He handed it to Kaidan, who turned it over in his hands, chuckling darkly. Loaded indeed. The coin was twinkling gold set within a ring of pale, glimmering moonstone, embossed with the likeness of Titus Mede on one side and the Imperial City on the other. Beautiful thing, worth one hundred septims. Normal folk rarely carried them, and Kaidan hadn’t seen one since his days running with – other circles.

“You really haven’t got a clue, have ya?” Kaidan scoffed. “Walking about with crowns in your pockets. Just how many of these d’you have tucked away in there?”

“Never you mind how many,” Lucien replied defensively, shouldering his pack a little further away from Kaidan. As though that would help him.

“Aye, settle down, no need to ruffle your feathers. Lucky you ran into me and not someone else, though,” he said, and slipped the large coin into his travel pack. Then glanced at the sky. “It’s getting’ darker. We ought to find somewhere’n set up camp. …You have brought the proper gear along for you little ‘expedition’, I hope?” he added as an afterthought.

“Oh yes, yes I have!” Lucien replied excitedly. “I went on a shopping trip back in Bruma to prepare, and the shopkeeper was very informative. He showed me all of his latest gear and equipment, explaining which tools I’d need for a whole variety of circumstances that would never have crossed my mind at all!”

“Aye, I bet he did,” Kaidan smirked. Any shop-keep worth half his salt can smell a cash-cow a mile out.

“I learned such a lot, and bought it all, of course. Can never be too careful,” Lucien continued. “Only problem is, along with my books it’s all frightfully heavy.”

“Nope. Draw the line at carryin’ stuff for ya.”

“I mean, you’re almost as big as an ox! I’m sure you’re as strong as one, too. ”

Kaidan just glared.

Lucien sighed. “Oh, alright. It was worth a try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys,
> 
> Trying my hand at some Skyrim since I'm mid-play through and head over heels with Kaidan, yet again. A playthrough which has been halted since I heard the mod is being worked on and Dan Lemon's recording more dialogue - so exciting!!  
> Anyway, enjoy some bants with our boi Lucien - I absolutely love this dork to bits, but he's not a major character in this fic. He'll be more of a recurring supporting character, coming and going on journeys of his own which intersect with Kai's and my LDB every now and then.  
> Please let me know what you think so far, and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> ~ Indie x


	2. Fern and Earth and Woodsmoke

**Fern and Earth and Woodsmoke**

Estrith sat on an old mossy stump. She watched as a bushy-tailed fox pawed inquisitively through the underbrush beneath quiet dawn at the very cusp of spring. The pinewood forests of Falkreath hold were an enchanting place. Ancient trees loomed overhead, piercing the gold-tinged sky and sheltering everything in the shimmering mists below. The air was crisp, the breeze was fresh, the whole world encapsulated in a soft, amniotic hush. It was easy, in such a place, to forget the world beyond the green. To fool oneself into thinking that all that lived breathed as one.

Erunor’s words came softly. So softly, she almost missed them. The hint of an echo of breath on the wind. “Close your eyes.”

Estrith did as the Bosmer told, and soft green muted to black.

“What can you hear?”

“…You, breathing like a troll,” Estrith whispered, mouth twitching. The elf tutted, and she was half surprised he did not swat her around the back of the head. The seriousness with which she took her training – that is to say, the lack of it – always grated against the elven hunter. But still, he persisted. And she was grateful for it.

“What lies behind?” he asked, the shape of his words almost imperceptible beyond the shifting of the early morning mists.

Estrith listened to the sounds of gurgling water and deciphered a low hum, a flutter of wings. “Dragonflies by the stream,” she murmured.

“Good,” Erunor approved. “Ahead?”

“Something tossing leaves near the tree over there.... a bird. A raven?” she guessed. Then it sang.

“Starling,” Erunor supplied. She could hear the smirk on his lips. “What of the fox?”

Estrith strained. “…About thirty paces, still pawing at the tree roots. Over there?” she pointed.

Erunor’s hand passed over hers and placed a single arrow into it. “Try not to lose it this time.”

Estrith exhaled and rose as slowly as she could to her feet, eyes still closed. The moss was all soft and slip beneath her boots, but she kept her footing. She listened carefully to each sound of the fox as it padded over roots and snuffled through the litter. Once she was sure she had it, she nocked the arrow. Erunor tossed the stone.

The fox startled, kicking up leaves in its haste to get away. Estrith drew back her arrow, striving to track the fox’s movements through sound alone. A scrape through broken branches to the left, a splash through mud slightly right, it stumbled –

Her arrow flew, catching the fox between its ears; it yelped. She watched it fall to the ground.

“Yes – ow!” Estrith began, jumping off the stump in celebration, which was swiftly cut short when she felt the smack upside her head. “Damnit, Ru, what was that for?”

“You peeked.”

Estrith groaned, rubbing the back of her head. “Only for a second!” she argued. “You were standing behind me! There’s no way you could have seen.”

“Estrith, I’ve been rolling dice with better hunters than you for decades,” he said, green eyes twinkling. Erunor tried and failed to smother a laugh as he walked away to collect the kill. “I know a damn cheat when I see one.”

“Well, I don’t know what you expect,” Estrith shouted at his back. She plopped back down onto the old stump to sulk. “How am I supposed to hit a target with my eyes closed… when I don’t have your stupid, oversized ears,” she added under her breath.

“These stupid, oversized ears are trying to teach you something useful here,” Erunor chided upon returning. Together they made quick work of dressing the carcass, Estrith dumping its entrails to the side and wiping her hands off with a grimace while Erunor strung the fox up along with their other kills of the morning. “It’d be in your interests to learn.”

Estrith rubbed her face angrily. “I don’t know why we even bother with this stupid exercise,” she moaned. “Realistically. I mean, when exactly do you see me picking a fight with something and then choosing to fight it with my eyes closed?”

“That’s precisely the point, you daft child. Not every battle will be of your choosing,” he sighed, pocketing his knife. “What if a wolf-pack descends on your camp in the night? Or you fall upon a den of vampires who stalk unseen through the shadows? You’ve an excellent eye, Estrith, I won’t deny you that. Better than most,” he added, with a hint of begrudging pride in his voice. “But you’ll find yourself, one day, in a fight you didn’t pick, without the strength on which you might usually rely – and you’ll have no choice but to draw upon that which is left to you.”

Groaning, Estrith rolled her eyes and rested her chin in her hand. Erunor knocked the elbow out from under her, earning a dirty look as he sat beside her on the stump in a swing of braids and woodsmoke.

“Petulant thing,” Erunor complained. “I don’t know why I put up with you. Thorn in my side and have been since the day we met.” Then his voice softened, and he bumped his shoulder into hers. “I must be getting soft in my age, or stupid… but I’ve grown fond of you. I mean it when I say that, when _that_ day comes – Y’ffre knows you’ll go looking for it – I’ll sleep better at night knowing you can survive it.”

Guilt plucked her chest, leaving Estrith to fidget idly with her hands. It was easy to forget, between her ill-tempers and his spiteful banter, that he cared. That sometimes when he looked at her, Erunor still saw the reckless, broken child he had found in the woods seven years ago who, with both eyes open, had walked straight into a fight she could not possibly have won.

Estrith remembered all too clearly the clouding, white-hot fury that blazed through her body that day when she heard them through the workshop window – Thalmor agents, laughing about a massacre. It was a stupid fight to pick – but an orphan at twelve years old with all the rage of winter, she could hardly have chosen better. It was a heady blend, that concoction of pent-up anger and fear and grief. She could not have stopped herself even if she had wanted to.

Straight and sharp, Estrith found the arrows in her hand before she had made any decision to grab them. They were arrows she knew well, their weight and balance, their flight and fall. She had hammered, shaped, and fletched them herself. A year’s worth of nights spent honing her eye, shooting arrow after arrow in the moonlight. And all the while, every whistle was an echo of elven whip screaming through the air; every thunk into the target board a memory of her father’s body as it hit the ground.

It was those memories Estrith summoned up as she stalked the Thalmor out of Helgen. Beneath bush and bough she breathed deep, mustering up every ounce of hate to smother each traitor flare of fear, hating how her hand shook against the draw.

The first arrow caught a breeze and plinked uselessly off the armoured shoulder of the rear guard. He turned and threw up a glimmering ward, scanning the treeline. The second arrow Estrith shot caught their leader in the cheek; a flash of bright red beneath eyes of soulless gold that searched for his aggressor, narrowed with fury. It was not enough to kill him. Not even enough to hurt him. But, she realised all too late, it was more than enough to give her position away. She dropped the bow and ducked, screaming as a fireball flew over her head. They shouted something she was glad not to have caught the words of.

Then she ran like she had never run before.

She felt the blazing heat of every fireball that struck the ground behind her, felt every crack of lightning reverb within her bones as it hit the nearest tree, and still she ducked and dove and scrambled up again. Estrith ran until her feet stung, until her legs went numb, until her lungs gave in and she felt as though she might throw up. She ran until she could run no more.

In her desperation, she had not noticed when the lightning ceased to crack, when the flames ceased to roar behind her. When Estrith eventually chanced a look over her shoulder, she found that she was no longer being chased at all.

She fell to her knees, retching and gasping for breath, wondering how by Talos she had lost them. Slowly, she came to realise she had lost herself as well. This part of the woods was unknown to her. She curled up into a ball and began to cry. Huge, wailing, relentless tears; relief that she was still alive, frustration that she had failed, and a year and a day’s worth of grief.

Heaving, sobbing, face down in the mud… that was how Erunor found her.

He scooped her up and held her together while she cried. He cleaned up all the cuts and grazes she did not know she had. He led her to the bodies of the Thalmor, riddled with his own arrows. He showed her how to burn them. When it was done, he walked her back to the safety of Helgen’s walls and towers.

“Do you remember how mad old Isdrid was when you returned me home?” Estrith asked him as she returned to the present moment.

“Don’t think I’d ever heard him curse so much before. Or after, come to think of it!” Erunor chuckled fondly, thinking of the grizzly old fort smith. “A curse on his door from the second he took you in, he said. Gods rest his soul. Thought he’d never let me set foot back into the shop again.”

Estrith grinned, remembering his fury well. Most of the time, she was the cause of it. And more than half the time it was deserved. “You told him I went to pick a fight with some wolves,” she reminisced.

“You had,” Erunor said. “Wolves with magic and murder in mind – the very worst pack imaginable.”

Estrith shrugged, then laughed. “Sihtric would lock me in the basement if he ever learned the truth, even now. You know, he didn’t let me out of his sight for weeks after?”

“Explains how you wiggled out of it in a matter of days, then,” the Bosmer chuckled, long tawny braids shaking with the rhythm of his humour. “Your fool brother should’ve left it to Isdrid – even half blind with age, he’d at least have been able to keep _both_ eyes on you.”

Estrith’s mouth fell open. Did he just…

Erunor grinned wickedly. “Between them, they’d’ve made a whole pair…”

“You can’t joke about that! That’s awful,” she cried, swatting him on the arm.

“Awful, eh?” Erunor asked, laughing between each blocked swipe. “You’re the one who took advantage of it. I’ll bet the very second dear Sihtric looked down to hammer a shield, off you went!”

“Stop it!” Estrith wrenched her arm out of his grip. Then she chuckled despite her best efforts not to, and added, “ and it wasn’t a shield… Isdrid didn’t trust him with those yet.”

“Even worse,” the Bosmer lamented playfully. Then he sighed, “poor lad deserves better from you.”

“He does,” Estrith agreed. “So do you.”

Estrith exhaled, resting her head on the shoulder of the man who saved her life – and not just from the Thalmor in the woods. She was always a restless, wayward child; if there was trouble to be had, she could be relied upon to find it. But when the Thalmor came, and all that happened after… she found herself reduced to a small, sharp, spiteful thing; friend to nothing but fury, always lashing out and making a mess. She had no clear path to walk and no longer cared for one.

Then Erunor came and showed her another way.

Granted, he probably only agreed to train her to stop her from following him around pestering him about it. But all the same. He showed her the way of the hunt. Taught her to walk the wilds, read the land, listen to the beating heart of the world. With his patience and restraint, he tempered her grief and rage, gave it shape and direction. Estrith loved her father and missed him dearly, and she still wanted to rain fire upon the Thalmor for what they did to him. But one morning during a campout in the woods, Estrith woke up to find that the hole his death had left in her life had been softened somehow, reshaped, and filled anew. When the sun was high and the sky clear, there were even moments in Erunor’s company where she felt… safe, again.

“I don’t think I ever really thanked you,” Estrith said quietly.

It was a long time before Erunor spoke. “You can thank me by staying out of this foolish war,” he said eventually.

Estrith paused, then turned to hold his gaze. Dazzling emerald, as pure and deep as the forest around them. She saw herself reflected in his eyes, a sharp, pale, petty thing in comparison. “Not again,” she whispered, turning to glare at the distance. “We’ve talked about this before, Ru. You know -”

“I know,” the elf sighed, and for a rare moment the lines of his face revealed something of his age. A tale of resignation and regret, exposing a man who had seen too much and, perhaps, done too little. “I know what it means to you, Estrith. I understand. But… you are young. You’ve your whole life ahead of you –”

“My life ended the day the Thalmor kicked down my door, Erunor,” Estrith snapped. The words were hard and bitter.

Silence descended as Estrith pushed off the stump and stooped to gather her belongings. Erunor dropped his head to his hands, muttering something about the stubbornness of Nords. Estrith held her tongue; reminding herself that the anger she felt was not for him. The uneasy silence endured as the pair made back for the road, each lost to their own thoughts. It was not until the walls of Helgen came into view that it broke.

“How much?” Erunor asked.

“I’m short six-hundred for the horse,” she replied tersely. “If bandits continue to show the balls they did last season, shouldn’t be too hard to make. Siddgeir’s upped his bounty to thirty a head, hoping to put them off.”

“At that price, you might make it to Windhelm before the frost falls,” Erunor said contemplatively.

“With any luck.”

“It’s a long journey. You’ll want a good horse,” Erunor said. He held up their bundle of kills for the Imperial guard on patrol, who nodded and waved them along. Erunor adjusted the bundle over his shoulder while Estrith resisted the urge to spit at his feet as they passed. “You don’t want any old farmyard mule who’ll throw you off at first fright,” the elf continued. “I could give you some advice when you choose –”

“You mean try and talk me out of it,” Estrith argued, bristling.

“No. That’s not –”

“Of course it is,” she yelled spitefully. “I wish I’d never told you! Ever since I did, you’ve done nothing but –”

“Why must you fight _everything_ \- don’t you ever get tired of it? Because I sure as hell – just wait, will you?!” Erunor bemoaned as Estrith strode away in anger. He grabbed her shoulder. She shook it off. He dropped the bundle of hares and foxes on the roadside to gain better purchase and shook her shoulders. “Would it kill you to listen to me, for once in your life?”

“Why?” Estrith countered. “I’m not a little girl who needs controlling, Erunor. I can make my own –”

“Gods damn it, I’m not trying to control you – I’m trying to _protect_ you!”

Estrith, having never heard the elf raise his voice to her before, stilled. His grip on her shoulders dug deep.

A heavy sigh escaped Erunor’s lips as choose his words. When he continued, his voice softened, as did his hands as they fell to her elbows. “I know what you’ve suffered, Estrith. Believe me.”

Estrith studied the laces of her boots, not able to meet his eyes. The loops of her left were lopsided. One string tracked through the mud.

“I’ve seen what you’re capable of. You’re brave, you’re fast, you’re smart… yet you’re so incredibly _stupid_ ,” he said with a dry chuckle. He lifted her chin to meet his eyes. “You know I think of you as my own.”

Estrith pulled away, shaking her head. “Don’t,” she said, folding her arms.

Erunor didn’t, instead pulling her into a hug, rough and sudden. The strength and smell of him enveloped her, all fern and earth and woodsmoke – scents, she realised, felt like home. “It’s true,” he said. “Not sure when it started, but I do. I have for years. Perhaps I should have told you sooner. I sometimes wonder whether you’d be storming off to fight a war that can’t be won if I had.”

It was the tickle of his braids, Estrith told herself, that pricked up tears in her eyes. She blinked them away.

Erunor released her then but brought his hands to cup her face, his bowyer’s callouses rough against her cheeks; with a thumb she traced the matching shape across her own palm, a pattern earned after years of training that she wore like a badge of pride. “I don’t seek to control you, Estrith – and woe to the poor fool that ever tries,” he added with a forlorn smile. It almost broke her heart. “I just want you to be safe –”

“Out of my way, lest you interfere with official Thalmor business.”

Estrith stiffened and turned a glare over Erunor’s shoulder. There stood four Thalmor officials: three decorated with resplendent golden armour bearing the insignia of the Aldmeri dominion; one draped in the billowing black and gold robes of a Justiciar. In tow, a fifth man lingered bound with rope and dressed in rags.

“Now, dogs! Whilst you still draw breath!” the Justiciar barked. Behind him, one of the guards caressed the hilt of their sword, their smile sickening.

Erunor hastened out of their path, drawing Estrith along with him. He threw a protective arm in front of her as they passed, though Estrith had the distinct feeling that the thing he sought to protect her from was herself. It was a gesture not missed by the altmer soldier who brought up the rear.

“Pathetic excuse for an elf,” she uttered with disgust, spitting at Erunor’s feet.

Estrith imagined tearing the elf’s tongue out and forcing her to eat it. She watched them through narrowed eyes for a long while, her stare lingering on their prisoner. A Stormcloak rebel, most likely. Wherever they were taking him, she knew he would never be seen by his comrades again. If she and Erunor had come across them further into the woods, she might have tried to help him, but beneath the gates and towers of Helgen…

“There’s nothing we can do for him,” Erunor whispered. He nodded towards the watchful eye of the Imperial gate-guards at the wall.

“I know,” Estrith sighed, resigned. She shot the gate-guards a look of her own before stooping down to pick up the bundle of game.

“That’s the problem,” Estrith continued beneath her breath, safe within the rabble of the markets. People jostled among the stalls, vendors called out their wares, and the two hunters melted indiscernibly into the undulating waves of the crowd. “Until the Empire and their psychotic puppet masters are out of Skyrim, no one’s safe.” She turned to catch Erunor’s eye and held it this time; in the clarity of his green, she saw the darkness of her own reflected back, like little coals wanting heat, eager to burst into flame. “Not me. Not you. Not anyone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hellooo,
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's read, commented or kudossed! It's always a bit nerve-wracking putting out something you've made, more so when its a chapter that's entirely composed of OC's like this one! I honestly have no idea how real authors ever manage it! I've put a lot of work behind the scenes with both of of these characters, so hopefully over time they'll come across as fleshed out as I feel they are. Time will tell!
> 
> We'll be switching perspectives to cover both halves of the story, so next update you can expect a little more Kaidan! In the meantime if you've any asks, fire away!
> 
> Hope you're all staying safe during these troubling times. Peace!
> 
> ~ Indie x


	3. Burdens to Bear

**Burdens to Bear**

Kaidan almost made it the entire day without snapping.

He actually _had_ made it the entire day without snapping. Their tents had been erected some time ago. Kaidan’s steel mail lay inside along with his pack, leaving his shoulders unstrapped and unburdened for a time. The sun had long since dipped beneath the jagged horizon, blots of inky blue swelled behind the eternally white-capped peaks. The campfire was aflame, its logs crackling pleasantly, and a rolling flurry of smoke concealed the moons at intervals entirely dependent on the half-hearted whims of the last winds of winter. One could smell the coming of spring in the air, a freshness in the breeze that spoke of expectant earth and wide awakening. The day itself was over and done and, in all, it looked to be a peaceful night ahead.

Until his companion started talking.

Kaidan wasn’t sure what exactly it was about the voice of Lucien Flavius that set his teeth on edge. There was a certain nasal quality to it, something in its tone and timbre that Kaidan couldn’t quite put his finger on. It put him in mind of hot air through a reed. It didn’t help that every other word out of his mouth declared a life spent of nothing but lavish comforts and the freedom to pursue literally anything one wanted.

It was a concept Kaidan had never been introduced to… let alone acquainted with.

It sounded as though he were jealous, saying it like that, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Kaidan had never needed nor wanted a life of comfort, and he wasn’t so petty as to begrudge some pompous man-child an upbringing he could scarcely imagine. All it meant was they didn’t have a fool’s chance in hell of understanding each other. No common ground to stand on.

It was a simple enough question, in the beginning. _‘What sort of books do you like to read, Kaidan?’_ Perfectly civil. Nothing offensive or inflammatory about the inquiry. Nothing to suggest that the ensuing conversation would spiral into a heated argument within which Lucien doubted Kaidan’s possession of anything even half-way resembling a brain and Kaidan threatened to serve Lucien’s pampered backside up to the next wolf pack they crossed on a silver platter.

Needless to say, they’d spoken remarkably little since crossing the Imperial checkpoint. While Kaidan felt in better spirits since setting foot in Skyrim again, the week left ahead of them to reach to Helgen still seemed seven days too long. But if each night went on like this, with a campfire crackling enthusiastically and the night sky clear, the days would pass soon enough.

A night such as this would have put Brynjar in a mind to tell stories, if he were still here to tell them. Tales of adventurers crossing wretched barrow-kings or jealous wisp-mothers on nights ill-lit by moonlight; beneath clear skies, Brynjar told of battles fought and glory won. Kaidan loved those best, back when he was a lad. It set him off imagining a life of battle and glory of his own. Treasures to find, maidens to rescue, that sort of thing.

Kaidan sat by the fire, passing a whetstone across the length of his sword, enjoying the quiet of the night and thinking fondly of those simpler times.

“So… Kaidan?”

The whetstone shrieked against his blade. Kaidan’s response slipped through his teeth. “Yes?”

Lucien began timidly. “If we’re speaking to one another again –”

“Are we?”

“ – Why don’t you tell me about your… your warrior upbringing.”

“Are you actually asking,” Kaidan scorned, not taking his eyes off his sword. “Or are you just lookin’ for another way to insult my intelligence?”

“Oh… look,” Lucien said softly. “I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot before.”

Kaidan lay his whetstone aside and glanced across the campfire. Lucien sat cross-legged at the foot of his poorly erected tent, looking up at him earnestly. The thick, leather bound journal in which he was forever scribbling lay closed in his lap.

“Please? I’d like to know,” Lucien urged. His clear blue eyes sparked with something innocent and sincere. A genuine curiosity.

Kaidan ran a hand through his dark hair. He had no interest in making friends – especially not with a stuffy, clumsy magic-user like Lucien. But the night was cold, the road ahead was long, and Kaidan couldn’t remember the last real conversation he’d had – let alone who it was with. He found himself talking before he’d even decided to.

“It was a nomadic life,” Kaidan began. “Saw more of Tamriel than most people do in their whole lives, I think, ‘nd we slept under the stars most nights.” He reached down to pick up a cloth and a vial of oil and fell into the familiar back-and-forth along the length of his nodachi, a comforting rhythm that took the frown from his lips. “Had a weapon put in my hand from the moment I could walk, really. Never had the luxury of learnin’ anything if it wasn’t key to survival.”

“Sounds like an entirely different world,” Lucien pondered thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I envy you. I’ve always appreciated the comforts of home.”

Kaidan smirked. “It shows.”

Lucien took no offence but smiled right back – if a little bashfully. Then he gazed into the distance at nothing, quiet and wistful, picking at the worn corners of his journal. “I spent my whole childhood surrounded by books, nose-deep in daydreams about the furthest corners of Tamriel. Meanwhile, you were out there seeing it all first-hand. I can’t imagine what that must have been like. Is there any place in particular you consider home?”

“Skyrim, perhaps. Always felt familiar, somehow,” Kaidan shrugged. “But no, nowhere specifically. We never stayed in one place too long – and never long enough to put down any kind of roots. Followed his feet, Brynjar did, to wherever the winds took ‘em.”

“Was Brynjar your –”

“He wasn’t my father, no,” Kaidan said. “But it was just me ‘n him for as long as I can remember, so I guess he might as well’ve been. Taught me everything he knew.” Including some habits Kaidan wished he hadn’t.

Brynjar was just like any other Nord – as hard, cold, and stubborn as the lands they were born to. He never told Kaidan much about his mother, and even less about his father. As a lad he spent his whole life following Brynjar’s lead, living life a safe distance from the roads, learning where to hide, how to run, when to stand and fight – all without ever really knowing why.

Eventually, Kaidan just stopped asking.

There were better days Brynjar’s spirits were high; he’d laugh from his belly and the light of it would almost reach his eyes. Some days, he’d rant and rage and could hardly stand for the drink. Towards the end, seemed like those days were the only kind Brynjar ever had. When he was younger, Kaidan used to wonder what horrors Brynjar had seen that made him so desperate to hit the drink and the moon-sugar just to scour them from his mind.

Of course, then Kaidan got into a mess of his own making and found he suddenly understood.

“I take after my father, too, I guess,” Lucien said, and Kaidan, for once, found he was glad for the sound of his voice. It drew him away from dark memories and darker thoughts before they’d wrapped too tight around him. “He’s an academic like me – always up to his elbows in old scrolls. He does a lot of work for the Imperial government, hunting down relics for them. That sort of thing.”

“Is that why you’re ‘ere then?” Kaidan asked. “Tryin’ to follow in the footsteps of your old man?”

Lucien laughed. “Oh no, not at all! I’ve come to Skyrim for – well, so many things! The culture, the architecture, but most of all for the enormous Dwemer presence here.”

“There’s no Dwemer here,” Kaidan scoffed. “Or anywhere, fer that matter.”

“Yes, yes, I know _that_. But everything they left behind remains,” said Lucien, enthusiasm bubbling through him. “Here more than anywhere else in Tamriel. The technology the dwarves possessed all those years ago is miles beyond us, even today! Lighting systems without the need for oil nor flame, mechanical creatures to do their bidding, entire underground cities connected in ways we can scarcely imagine. It’s said the Dwemer harnessed the true power of the stars and I – I don’t even know what that means!” Lucien laughed, flapping his arms about in excitement. “I’ve spent my _entire life_ – which, granted isn’t all that long in the grand scheme of things – pursuing knowledge in all of its forms. I studied at the Arcane University, spent a couple of years in the archives of the White-Gold Tower, attended in every academy in the city, but… no amount of academic knowledge can compare to some practical experience. I’m done just _reading_ about the world,” Lucien cried, getting to his feet. “I want to _see_ it!”

Kaidan raised his brows, plugging the stopper back into his vial of oil. “I wish you well, Lucien,” he said, responding more to the absence of Lucien’s voice rather than anything he’d actually said. He’d caught something about the dwarves and technology but, honestly, he’d zoned out mid-way through. “But take it from me, there are parts of this world best left unseen – includin’ those dwarven ruins. You’re as like to get yerself killed before settin’ eyes on anything if you’re not careful,” smiling through the echo of a warning he’d received himself as a lad.

“Wait, you don’t mean –” Lucien gasped, stumbling forwards to clasp Kaidan’s shoulders. His journal fell the floor, pages in danger of scattering to the winds. “Have _you_ ever explored a Dwemer ruin?”

Kaidan let loose a bark of a laugh and shook him off. “Are you mad? Brynjar raised me better than that.”

Lucien was not easily deterred. He stepped away to right the pages of his journal with a speculative glint in his eye. “You know… it’s said the ruins are filled with treasure. The right smith would pay a high price for dwarven metal alone to work, I’m sure. Not to mention –”

“– Deaf ears, Lucien. No amount of coin or treasure – or knowledge – is worth becoming a Falmer’s dinner in my book,” Kaidan said idly, holding up his nodachi to better admire its glint and sheen in the firelight. At just the right angle, its strange runes seemed to glimmer, come alive. He vaguely wondered how it would fare up against a dwarven centurion, then quickly thought better of it. Rumour had it they were more than twice as tall as any man, their shining plate as impenetrable as the day they left the forge.

Lucien sighed, defeated, and flopped back down in front of his tent. “I’d have better luck convincing cow to fly,” he muttered. “I suppose you’ve already had your fill of treasure in that sword of yours, anyway.”

“…What’s that supposed to mean?” Kaidan frowned, glancing over his sword’s black edge at Lucien’s knees, as the rest of him just wasn’t visible from behind his lopsided tent-flaps. It was a fine sword, but –

“…Now _I’m_ more interested in what _that’s_ supposed to mean,” Lucien probed, propping himself up onto his elbows to look at Kaidan’s sword, almost as long as he was tall. “You do know what you’re holding there, don’t you?” he asked. Then he gaped open mouthed when the silence stretched on.

Kaidan dropped his gaze back to the sword, thinking of the moment it came into his hands.

Three days he’d spent crawling through the wilds of the Rift, dodging trolls and bears with nothing but a dagger and his waterskin. Another week passed before he’d tracked Brynjar down to a seedy dockside tavern outside of Riften. Kaidan remembered how his hands shook when he found him sitting there in that grubby little booth, grinning stupidly into a mug of ale with a wench sat on his knee. He’d promised Kaidan a hunting trip for his thirteenth birthday, but what he gave him was another shitty survival exercise instead. All that anger soon evaporated, though, when Brynjar took him out to the woods that night, dug up a long, wrapped bundle and revealed what lay within.

_This was your mother’s blade, boy,_ Brynjar had said through his lopsided smile with a gleam in his eye that, even all these years later, Kaidan never really understood. _You’re a man, now. Time’s come for you to bear its weight yourself._

So bear it Kaidan did, as though it was worth its weight in gold. In his heart it was worth infinitely more.

Twelve years he’d carried it, cared for it, shed blood with it. Intensely aware that it had once belonged to his mother, twelve years he’d loved it, too. He’d grasp his hands around the hilt and imagine his mother’s doing the same, a lifetime away. Wondered what she looked like, how her voice might have wrapped around the sound of his name, whether she would have been proud to call him her son. It was twelve years of the very softest sort of torture.

Since Brynjar died, his sword was the only real clue Kaidan had as to who he really was and where he might’ve come from. The source of so many of his questions and answer to none.

“You have no idea, do you?” Lucien surmised gently. He stepped around the campfire to stand before Kaidan, eyes drinking up the sight of his sword as though it were a marvel. When he spoke, his voice carried the hushed tones of awe. “Unless I’m mistaken – and there’s always a possibility, but I rarely am – what you’re in possession of here is the sword of an agent of the Blades.”

Kaidan felt his heart stutter.

“The Blades?” he repeated numbly.

“Yes. Sometimes called the Arms of the Throne. They were an elite order of highly-skilled warriors dedicated to the protection and service of the Emperor,” Lucien said, in the tone of voice one might use when reciting from a historical tome. “Espionage, military, diplomacy – you name it, chances are you’d find a Blades agent doing it in every court of every castle in every country. Their reach extended all across Tamriel – and, by extension, so too did the Emperor’s. Until –”

“– Until the Thalmor took them out,” Kaidan spat venomously, regaining his senses.

He’d heard the stories. When opportunity presented itself, he’d read the histories, too. Brynjar said the Blades had recognised the rising Thalmor threat decades before anyone else had. They’d been fighting it, and eventually paid the price. It was what started the Great War all those years ago – the systematic execution of every Blades agent from across Summerset and Valenwood. Their heads were presented to the Emperor before his very throne… cartloads of them. Everyone else who’d ever even associated with the Blades met the same fate, either during the war or in the years that followed.

If there was anything that Kaidan had learned – all those bouts of sparring, chasing bounties, fending for himself in the wilds – it was how to be the last man standing, no matter what the adversary. Man, beast, or otherwise, Brynjar made damn sure Kaidan had the skills to overcome it all. All except the Thalmor.

They were the one enemy Brynjar made Kaidan swear he’d never make.

So, swear he had, right upon his sword and thought nothing more of it. Chalked it up to paranoia from his days fighting in the war. Everyone feared the Thalmor. But still… Kaidan always had the sense that Brynjar was running from something. It was with a cold, creeping dread that Kaidan looked upon the sword in his hands… and realised what had been staring him in the face all his life.

_This was your mother’s blade, boy. Time’s come for you to bear its weight yourself._

Kaidan felt the world grow cold.

“Precisely… on the 30th of Frostfall, the day the war began,” Lucien said pensively. “My mother was there, you know. Escorted the Aldmeri ambassador into the palace herself. Countless times she’s told of the battles they fought against the Dominion during the war but… of that day she never speaks.”

Kaidan buried the tip of his nodachi in the ground and paced around the fire, seething. He’d guessed that something dark lay in the unknown shadows of his mysterious past but… he’d imagined bandits. Raiders. A hunting trip gone wrong. A run in with the law, even. He was an orphan of unfortunate circumstance.

Not systematic genocide at the hands of the Dominion.

“What makes you think it’s of the Blades?” Kaidan asked, eventually. Shaking fingers closed to fists, nails biting into palms. He turned and paced the other way.

“The craftmanship,” Lucien said simply. He crouched down to peer at the sword, eyes roaming every inch of it, fingertips hovering reverently just out of reach. “Utilitarian in its design but beautiful to behold… the very signature of Akavir – where the Blades were from before they became the Blades,” he explained briefly. Lucien shifted to admire the sword from another angle. “No one else but the Blades have carried swords like this through all of history. And, after their outlawing and subsequent extermination, well…” he trailed off, the implication obvious. Lucien then blurted, like an excited chid, “Can I touch it?”

Kaidan said nothing, and Lucien took that as permission enough.

Head spinning, Kaidan retook his seat near the fire. Could his mother really have been a Blade?

Brynjar, too?

He had to have been. The hatred in his voice, the horror in his eyes… whenever Brynjar warned of the cruelties of the Thalmor, it always sounded as though the offense was personal. Now…

Now Kaidan knew that it was.

It was too much to take in.

“What I don’t understand are these runes,” Lucien said, shaking Kaidan out of his reverie. The skinny Imperial sat cross-legged before the fire with the sword across his lap, trailing his fingers across the length of it. “They just don’t belong. They’re only seen in –”

“– Ancient Nordic ruins,” Kaidan mumbled, head in his hands.

Lucien blinked across the fire at him, surprised. “And how do you know that?”

“Surprised, are you?” Kaidan chuckled darkly and ran an agitated hand through his hair. “Picked up a bounty outside of Cheyindhal a couple months back, this nutjob mage who’d gone on a killin’ spree. The bastard had covered himself in tattoos of runes like that, kept blabbering on about how they held a secret power within ‘em, and that he’d unlocked it. I noticed afterwards his tattoos looked like the markings on me sword, but of course by then it were too late. Can’t ask many questions of a corpse.”

“Indeed,” Lucien said, raising his eyebrows. Then he lifted his eyes to meet Kaidan’s. “And now here you are, in Skyrim. Land of the Nords. Presumably this is the business you spoke of… investigating the meaning of these runes. It is quite the puzzle. Ancient Nordic runes on a blade of Akavir…” he said, his voice throughful.

“Aye,” Kaidan said shortly, suddenly overcome with exhaustion. He strained to rise his feet, body aching right through to his bones, and held out a hand for his sword. Lucien reluctantly gave it up. “If you don’t mind takin’ first watch, I reckon I’ll hit the sack.”

“Oh, er… yes, of course,” Lucien said, laughing nervously. “I’ll umm, I’ll give you a shout if any wolves come our way!”

Kaidan’s lips twitched – too troubled for anything close to a true smile. “Sure thing. Preferably before you set anything alight,” he joked, returning his nodachi to its sheathe and turning away.

“Wh - where did you even _find_ such a thing, anyway?” Lucien blurted out abruptly. Kaidan glanced over his shoulder. “All that remains of the Blades, besides what’s written in the history books, are rumour and speculation. The Thalmor made it their mission to destroy everything else. And yet, here you are walking around with a Blade war sword in pristine condition. _How_?” he asked, flabbergasted. “And more to the point, how have you not been _killed_?”

Kaidan shrugged. “I kill anyone stupid enough to try,” he said shortly, walking away.

Crawling into his tent, Kaidan gently lay down his sword and flopped down heavily onto his bedroll. As tired as he was, he doubted sleep would find him.

There was every chance his imagination was getting away with him. After years spent grasping for answers, was he just latching on to the first explanation he’d found? For all he knew, his mother could have won the sword in a game of cards. There was no evidence she’d been a Blade at all.

Fuck. Who was he trying to fool?

Kaidan rubbed his eyes bitterly. A memory of Brynjar’s face swam into view, grizzled and glaring. Behind the glare, a glint of fear. ‘ _Cloak on, hood up, not a word unless I say so, lad. You hear?’_

Kaidan had lived his entire life in hiding. That alone was evidence enough.

He reached his hand out to rest on the hilt of his sword, but it brought him no comfort tonight. Having had no place to call his own, home became a place Kaidan carried with him, sheltered and safe within this sword. A place of comfort and belonging when none could be found, a ghost of the love and life he’d lost.

Loss, now, is all he felt as he held the hilt within his hand. Loss, and grief, and a rage so cold it paralysed him. He wanted vengeance. Vengeance for his parents and lives they’d had taken from them. Vengeance for Bryjnar and himself, for the lives they could have led. Vengeance for the unnamed thousands who’d died at Thalmor hands.

But Kaidan was just one man.

What vengeance could one man reap against the army that brought an empire to its knees?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> Bit of a late update, but still on the 28th, as promised! I'm headcannoning that Kaidan's imprisonment at the Abandoned Prison marks his first proper run-in with the Thalmor. Previously his oath to Brynjar and learned paranoia was enough to keep him out of their sights, but when he steps foot back into Skyrim his luck just sort of runs out!
> 
> Anyway, enjoy some nerdy Lucien and broody Kaidan. (I will never not love a brooding Kaidan! <3)
> 
> ~ Indie x


	4. Burning Lavender

**Burning Lavender**

Nestled at the base of the mountain pass, Helgen’s uninspiring grey walls melted indiscernibly into the equally uninspiring grey rock of the mountainside. To the untrained eye, Helgen appeared no different than any other fort. Three rounded watchtowers stood tall to appraise the roads and all who walked them. Every gate was guarded. A hefty old stone building in the centre marked the fort proper; the armoury, barracks, infirmary and guardhouse were all stationed here. Helgen was, for all intents and purposes, just one of many strongholds dotted around Skyrim.

Except that it was not.

Helgen sat on a crossroads.

The road north led to Whiterun, a city in the very heart of Skyrim that boasted a great number of things. Dragonsreach, the legendary keep; Jorrvaskr, mead-hall of the fabled Companions; the Skyforge, home to flames as old as Skyrim itself. It was the very heart of craft and trade in Skyrim, cradled by leagues of fertile fields and plains teeming with game. In Whiterun, the people prospered, and it was little wonder why.

If instead you took the road east out of Helgen, it would lead you through the jagged Jerall pass and bear you towards Riften, jewel of the Rift. A lakeside city of commerce, coin, and cutpurses; people there prospered, too… until they did not. It was said the Thieves Guild owned Riften from their city below the city with a hand in every pocket and a key to every lock.

Travelers who took the west-road found themselves in Falkreath, capital of the hold and a haven for hunters. The ancient forests stood tall and proud, teeming with all manner of creatures. Ancient and sprawling, a graveyard larger than the town itself sheltered the bones of Skyrim’s finest warriors through many an age.

And to the south…

Well, to the south lay Cyrodil, the seat of the Empire itself. Most travellers from the Empire entered Skyrim by way of Helgen, earning it the nickname _The Gateway of the North_. A rather grand title for what was, essentially, a great, cobbled together, patchwork mess of a town. Every passing year brought another change, saw one building levelled and another building raised, until the fort was not just a fort anymore, but so much more.

There were woodsmen, farmers, guardsmen, and wives each going about their daily duties; children playing with sticks in the mud; travellers losing their way from one tavern to the next. Scholars from the university, hoping to survive the savagery of the north while scouring old ruins, swigged ale at the inn beside merchant-traders eager to try their fortune and mercenaries of every flag and colour. Here a passing hunter selling her game; there a tanner haggling for furs.

There were soldiers, too, bedecked in the Emperor’s scarlet and silver. There were more of those than you could count, creeping through every crack like an infestation. You would find them training in the yard, manning the wall, doing their rounds, placing orders at the smith, collecting the taxes. It seemed to Estrith that every day there were more and more. Some days, she half-feared that the Imperials would win the war through numbers alone.

“Oi, Feywinter!”

Estrith stopped in her path and swallowed a curse, knowing it would get her nowhere.

The name was _Fair_ winter. They all knew it, too.

Their father was a quiet man. He’d tried to lead a quiet life. But all who walked the road from Riften to Falkreath knew of the woodsman at the forest’s edge. They had to, should they want to survive ill-fortune through the pass. Roaming wolfpacks, sudden snowstorms, a troll too far down from the mountains, all were dangers one faced on the East road. Her family lived a simple life there on the threshold between rock and wood, but offered rest and welcome to whoever might need it.

Yet for some reason, when a pair of children stumbled down the road and into Helgen town, bloodied and half-starved, it no longer seemed to matter who their parents were or where they came from. People started talking. It wasn’t natural, they said, them making it so far all alone – and who’s to say how they survived… _whatever_ it was that orphaned them. Sihtric told everyone it was bandits… but from the looks in their eyes, Estrith knew that they could tell it was something far worse.

They were right, too, for it was the very monsters they had crawled into bed with.

But… saying so would have won them no favours. To earn the wrath of the Thalmor was to lose the mercy of everyone else. So, bandits it was and, though they were eyed with suspicion for weeks on end, it one day faded, as suspicion always does.

Being taken in by old Isdrid Ironheart helped, too.

Isdrid was the Keep’s smith, respected by all - a great bear of a man, all grey-haired and grizzled. He had served in the Great War as a quartermaster and retired to Helgen to work his trade in the years that followed. He took Sihtric on as his apprentice and Estrith watched from the side lines as he earned the respect and, eventually, the friendship, of the people of Helgen for his skill and dedication to the forge. It was not long before he grew sweet on a girl, inherited the smithy and was set on making a life.

Estrith, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with a life locked up inside Helgen’s walls. When she was not fletching arrows by the forge or plying her late mother's trade to aid the sick and wounded in the Keep, she kept to the company of Erunor in the woods and – more recently – the road to Falkreath in search of bounties to work and coin to earn. She cared little for making enemies, and even less for making friends. So as Sihtric rose in their affections and regained his rightful name as Fairwinter’s boy, Estrith was forever stuck as Feywinter; the strange one, the one not to be trusted and certainly not wanted.

“Hold, there!” the soldier repeated, catching her by the elbow. “You are the Fey girl, correct?” he asked.

Estrith shook him off. “Apparently,” she replied scornfully, adjusting her basket of herbs.

“You’re needed at the Keep,” he explained briefly, pushing chestnut curls out of his eyes. He, like many of the legionnaire recruits, had a face too young for war.

“Why?”

The soldier scowled at her. “A cartload of wounded if you must know. Bloody Stormcloak ambush on the roads.”

“Can’t the other healers see to it?” she asked irritably.

“They already are, but Captain Tulia asked for you by name. Divines can only guess why…” he muttered with an appraising glare. “Look, do I need to show you the way?” he implied when Estrith showed no signs of moving.

Estrith rolled her eyes and turned on the spot. “No, I’ll be there,” she called over her shoulder as she walked away – in the opposite direction to the Keep. Before long, she heard the soldier’s armour clinking and clunking behind her.

“Stop! I’ve got orders to –”

“Do you know my brother, Sihtric? Runs the smithy,” Estrith said, stopping so suddenly that the young soldier almost tripped over himself in an effort not to clatter into her. She took a step towards him, and put on the soft tones of anguish and concern. “He’s expecting his first child. It is strong, but restless. Iska… she eats so little and can hardly leave her bed for sickness. These herbs are the only thing that helps,” she explained, hands writhing around the basket in her arms. “Sihtric hides it well, but he’s worried. If anything ever happened to her – or the child – I don’t think he’d have the strength to go on living, let alone keep the forge alight…” Estrith mused, her eyes lingering on the sword tied to the soldier’s hip.

The soldier, for what it was worth, fidgeted uncomfortably on the spot. He opened his mouth to speak but then closed it again, eyes darting down to the basket.

“Would you really deny a pregnant woman her herbs?” Estrith pressed, wide-eyed and earnest.

He flinched. “N – no, of course not.”

“Then _piss off_ and leave me to my business,” she spat, turning on her heels again. “Tell your captain I’ll be there when I’m ready.”

*

The forge at Ironheart’s knew not the meaning of rest, for the Imperials stationed across the southern holds of Skyrim could hardly afford it to. Even before the war, however, Isdrid preferred to keep the fires burning day and night, and in the years since his death (at peace in his bed, which was rare), Sihtric kept to the tradition in his honour.

Her brother had expanded the smithy in the years since it fell into his hands, partnering with a smith from the Imperial city of Bruma, and had even taken on a couple of apprentices himself; black-haired Kjell, a lad with strong shoulders on the very cusp of manhood, and little Henrik whose farm and family were torched by raiders two winters past. When Estrith swung open the back door, it was Henrik who came running to greet her.

“Ess!” he grinned, throwing his arms around her waist. Then he pulled away and - as though remembering some deep insult - pouted, draw back a small hand and slapped her arm with it. “You said you’d take me with you this time!”

Estrith reached out to muss up the honeyed curls of his hair. “I tried to wake you. Not my fault you were snoring like a sabre-cat.”

“Was not!” Henrik argued, dodging away.

“Was too.”

“Was not!”

“Was –”

“Ah, Estrith. I thought I heard your voice.”

Estrith glanced across the room in time to see her bother enter it. He wiped off a sheen of sweat from his brow after an early morning working the forge as the door clicked quietly behind him.

Sihtric Fairwinter took after their father in every way he possibly could have. Golden haired, straight-nosed, strong-jawed and pale as Snowthroat itself, he had made all the girls swoon when he was younger. Now that he was married, they settled instead for sighing wistfully at him from across the yard whenever he was out stoking the fires or tempering swords. Sihtric was tall and lean, stronger than he looked, and it was a strength built by more than just his years working the forge. The scars he bore, slim and silvery, told a tale of hardship and hurt – none more so than the snarled mess of lines that criss-crossed the right side of his face, like a scattering of lightning before the moons. If that was not evidence enough, then the look he sometimes got in his eyes was – eyes that were kind and clever but carried a reserve of caution that many men of his age did not possess. One eye was as deep and blue as the Sea of Ghosts, the other, among the scars, was white as a ghost itself.

It was the price he had paid to keep breath in his lungs and blood in his veins.

Estrith shared the scars herself, of course. But for some reason she had kept her sight, both eyes remaining brown. It was the only thing either sibling had inherited from their mother, and secretly Estrith was glad to have kept them. But where their mother’s eyes were dark and warm and caught the sun like gemstones, Estrith mourned that hers were just a sad spectre of their memory, bleak and hard and flat.

“Henrik, go and tell Kjell to man the counter for a minute, would you?” Sihtric said, wiping his hands on his apron as he crossed the room.

“Okay!” Henrik’s face lit up, as it always did whenever he was given a job. “But… if I can’t find him, can I look after the shop myself?”

“You can’t even see over the counter,” Estrith teased as Sihtric shrugged, twisting his face into an expression that said: ‘why not’. Henrik stuck out his tongue and wiggled his bottom at her in passing, dodged the toe of her boot as it came swinging towards his backside, and shut the door to the shop with a click.

“Men came by earlier looking for you,” Sihtric said once he was gone. He rummaged through the food stores and pulled out an apple, wiping it on his sleeve. Estrith was not sure why he bothered, for it only wound up dirtier than before. “They said the Captain wants you at the Keep.”

“So I’ve heard,” Estrith replied, placing her basket down on the table and setting a pot to boil over the hearth.

“I hope you haven’t gotten yourself in trouble again,” Sihtric cautioned.

“No, it’s just – again?” she froze, a bundle of thistle heads halfway to the pot. "When's the last time that happened, Sihtric?"

“You tell me,” Sihtric provoked, crunching into the apple with a smirk.

“Ass,” Estrith muttered. She set the thistle heads to float atop the water and began grinding down herbs in the mortar. “Some more of their soldiers were wounded on the road, apparently. A Stormcloak ambush,” she added with a grin. Once the herbs were pulped, she added them to the pot. “It won’t harm them to sit a while, think about the side they’ve chosen to –”

“– Did you leave your senses in the wood? Mind what you say,” Sihtric chided. He shot a furtive glare towards the window, which he shuttered, and the door, which was already closed. Then he frowned at her. “I swear, Estrith, one of these days you’ll bring ruin to us all.”

Estrith ignored him. She brought a ladle to the pot as it came to a simmer and poured the liquid into a cup. A remedy for nausea for his wife who, although not quite as bad as Estrith had made her out to be to the soldier, was still bad enough. Her brother did worry, and on darker days when she was feeling most spiteful, Estrith thought he deserved the worry for having pupped her in the first place. She'd witnessed the burden or bringing life into the world and it was neither pretty nor pleasant.

She thrust the cup into Sihtric’s hands – herbal tea sloshing over its edges, apple core tumbling to the ground – and made for the door.

“…Sorry to break it to you, Sihtric,” Estrith said, staring at her hand upon the handle, “but our day of ruin has already been and gone. Remember?”

Sihtric sighed heavily. “Look, don’t you think it’s time you – Ess! Estrith, wait!”

But the door had already swung to a close behind her.

*

The infirmary in the Keep smelled like blood and shit, no matter what the healers burned to chase the stench away and, honestly, adding lavender into the mix just made it worse.

There were twelve soldiers, in all, to which they had been called to tend.

Were.

Three they had to ease towards their final sleeps, their wounds too great to stitch or mend. Another six suffered injuries so minor Estrith almost wondered why she had been called at all. They were the superficial kind of wound her mother had left to her when she was young, and they made for perfect training exercises for the apprentice. A basic poultice, a good bandage, and proper rest was all they’d need. Two of them were trickier. An arrow through the gut of one – easy enough to pull out, but harder to fix what was left behind. Only time would tell if he would make it through but, come morning, if he woke shitting blood and spewing bile, they would ease him along to Arkay as well. The other one had lost a lot of blood and came to them babbling. Tonics and rest would treat the former, but there was not a lot to be done for an injury to the mind.

Then there was the last of them. The young one. The one with grey eyes flecked through with gold and screams that would chase Estrith for weeks. He was unable to dismount fast enough when the Stormcloaks emerged from the trees, to hear the rest of the soldiers speak. Only survived the battle by virtue of being half crushed under his horse – his saving grace the fact that Ulfric’s men had already thought him dead.

Estrith sighed, still trying to pick out his blood from under her fingernails, and figured it was probably time she left to wash herself properly. He was not due to wake for hours. Then she looked up as the sounds of plate and mail came clinking down the hallway.

“How is it looking?” Captain Tulia asked stiffly, striding into the room. Her nose wrinkled around the stench, but she made no further sign of discomfort as she surveyed what was left of the men.

“Like a gods damned mess,” Estrith muttered, turning back to her unconscious charge on the bed. Her dark eyes roved over the length of him – pale, clammy, shivering – and made a note to grab more garlic and grass pods from the stores. When he whimpered in his sleep, she flinched. Then her gaze fell to the bloody stump of his leg and narrowed.

Amputation.

That is why they had called on her.

When Estrith first laid eyes on him, she could see why the Stormcloaks thought him dead. Her immediate thought was that if he were not dead now, he soon would be – and be better off for it, too. His left leg, right up to the knee, was all but a viscous pulp. The rest of him was a bloody mess, too, but how much of it was his own was anyone’s guess. She had argued for sending him off peacefully along with the others – surely, he had suffered enough for their wretched Empire. But the Captain would hear none of it. She even went so far as to offer Estrith coin if he pulled through.

Two hundred in gold – a third of what she was missing for the horse. It was all the persuading she needed. Forget beating the snowfall – she might make it to Windhelm with the sun at her back… and, sweet irony, with a Captain of the Empire paying her way, too.

 _If_ she could pull it off.

Now, Estrith did not have the strongest arm of the healers and she was not the quickest with the bone saw either – that was mother Alga, who was still busy burning lavender. But she _was_ the only healer in the fort who had performed an amputation in which the patient survived more than three weeks and who was still alive today, almost a year later.

It was the herbs, Estrith had told them. She tried to teach them how to mix them, too, just as Erunor had shown her. But no one was interested. The severing of a limb, not to mention the cleaning and stitching of it afterwards, was gruelling work. They were happy enough to leave it to the Fey girl with her foul mouth and elfin herblore. If a patient died under her care, they were happy enough to leave the blame and guilt to her, too.

“I saw you working, earlier,” Captain Tulia said, stopping just behind where Estrith sat. She caught a waft of the oil on her armour – not her favourite scent by any means but an improvement on blood, shit, and lavender, nonetheless. “You’ve the sort of focus I’ve only seen in scholars. Or sabre-cats,” she added as an afterthought.

Estrith wasn’t sure what to say to that. So, she said nothing and continued to pick at the crusted blood in her nails instead.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Captain Tulia spoke again. “Will he make it?”

A shrug was all Estrith gave in reply. He was still breathing, and that was all that could be said at this point.

“…He’s my nephew.”

It took Estrith a moment to realise that it was not a threat, but a lament. Somehow that made it worse.

Here was a boy perhaps no older than she was herself, who now would never walk unaided again – if he lived to walk again at all! And for what? To put down the men and women of Skyrim who fought only for the lives and liberty of their children? To help force what was left of the Empire bend over and spread their cheeks for the Dominion?

It was enough to make her blood boil.

“You might have thought about that before enlisting him into a war neither of you have any business fighting,” Estrith sniped bitterly, unable to help herself. She suddenly understood Captain Tulia’s poorly veiled desperation to save him, and Estrith hated her for it. Sihtric’s warning resounded hollow in her ears, but she was too angry to care for it. If the Captain wanted pity for the mess she had made, she would have to go elsewhere.

Before Captain Tulia could reply, Estrith rose to her feet, wooden stool clattering noisily behind her, but a hand grabbed her as she stepped away. The boy’s fingers gripped her tight, overwarm with the beginnings of a fever.

“Wait –” he croaked weakly. His voice rasped, probably from all his earlier screaming. Estrith untangled her hands from his and crouched beside him, bringing a skin of water to his cracked lips.

“…Should he be awake already?” Tulia worried, hovering at her shoulder.

“I’ll need to get more garlic and grass pod from the stores,” Estrith murmured, ignoring the question. She did not like the way his fingers burned around hers.

“…What?”

“Or have you changed your mind? Shall I let an infection take hold?” Estrith suggested carelessly, pushing past the black of his hair to place the back of her fingers to his forehead, his neck, his chest. She frowned. Too warm. “I suppose in a way you’d be sparing him from any further pain, but it’s not the way I’d choose to go. Better to have let him die whole.”

The Captain glared at her, grabbing her wrist and clamping down with a squeeze. “You should be more careful with that tongue of yours, girl, or else –”

“– Or else what?”

_“– Captain!”_

The pair of them spun around to see an Imperial messenger in the doorway, windswept and panting for breath, clearly having run the length of the Keep to deliver his message.

“Whatever it is, it’ll have to wait,” Tulia called dismissively, shoving Estrith out of reach and turning back to her nephew on the bed. “I’m busy.”

“Please, Captain Tulia, sir,” the messenger urged, “I don’t mean to intrude but… it’s urgent.”

The messenger stepped forward with a scroll in his outstretched hand, rolled and secured in black ribbon. Whatever that meant, it was enough to pull the Captain out of the infirmary and into the fort proper without another word. Estrith spared a moment to make a rude gesture at her retreating back and kick the wooden stool away before shouting for the apprentice to bring her the herbs and ingredients she needed.

“Valerian, too – and Imp Stool for the pain,” Estrith called at her back as she hurried away. “Handle it with gloves!”

When she turned back, she found the boy still awake, staring at her with his strange eyes. It was unnecessary, really, how beautiful they were. Grey as river ice speckled with gold, like treasures glimmering beneath their frozen surface. She had spent the better part of an hour looking into them as he strangled her hand through the pain, waiting for the tonic take him under, giving him another dose when it did not, telling him that he would be okay. Again and again she had repeated those words over his cries of pain, until she half-wanted to start screaming herself.

It was a lie. He would never be okay again, not really.

“What’s your name?” he rasped.

"Don't," Estrith hushed, crouching beside him. “You need to keep your strength.”

He closed his eyes and frowned. His hand twitched, as though reaching out for something. After a moment, Estrith took it again and he gave a little squeeze. “It hurts,” he moaned weakly.

It pained Estrith to hear it, and she was not altogether sure why. She had tended to dozens upon dozens of injured legionnaires, some more spitefully than others, but most with a cool indifference. But there was something about this one – his youth, perhaps? – that had crept under her skin and caught her off guard.

“I know,” Estrith breathed. “I’m sorry.” She looked over her shoulder, wondering what was taking the girl so long. When she turned around again, she found the boy watching her, his eyes searching every inch of her face, lingering on the scars.

“I’m Amatus.” It sounded like music, despite the scratching of his voice.

“A pretty name,” she said dryly, hoping to ease the tightening of his eyes and distract him from the pain. “To go with your pretty eyes.”

Amatus’ lips twitched. “Then, I think your name must sound divine.”

Estrith exhaled, a disbelieving half-laugh. The sound of footsteps grew lounder behind them. “And _I_ think you have hit your head.”

“It _is_ a long way down from atop a horse,” he croaked. “But I think I’m thinking more clearly than ever,” he said sadly. Then he gasped, sharp and tight, as Estrith checked the bandage on his… what was left of his leg.

“Sorry,” she repeated uselessly, wondering why she cared for his comfort. She never spared a moment for the others, always doing just what needed to be done no matter what sounds they made.

Amatus stared resolutely at the ceiling. “…How does it look?”

Estrith waited until he looked back to her before replying, unsure what answer to give. Though his face was twisted slightly with pain, his eyes were different. No longer shimmering with agony and fear, as they had been hours earlier. They were darker, now… hardened with a sort of grim acceptance, and somehow all the more striking for it.

“It looks like shit,” Estrith said bluntly, releasing his hand to take the bundle of supplies from the apprentice girl. “And it always will. But it could be worse. At least you had the sense not to land on your face,” she shrugged.

Amatus made a noise, which she thought was supposed to be a snort, and then fell back into his watchful silence.

Estrith surveyed what the apprentice had brought her and smiled. All the herbs she had asked for and a tincture of Valerian already distilled – handy. She had even brought fresh bandages, clean rags, and a pail of treated water from the hearth. She gave the apprentice – Inja, she learned – instructions on how to mix a poultice to numb the pain and ward off infection, then had her brew a tea with enough of the Valerian to send Amatus to sleep, but not so much that he’d be knocked out for a week with fever dreams.

Meanwhile, Estrith set to work herself on peeling away the bandages, cleaning off his stump, checking how the stitches held, and wrapping it anew. There was no worrying smell yet – at least, not that she could discern over the ambient scent of the room, shit-ridden lavender included – but it was still too early to tell what would become of the wound. Amatus endured the entire process in a stony silence. His eyes never strayed from hers. Not until the sleeping tea began to take its hold did his gaze stray and eyelids flutter.

A pair of night nurses arrived then and, after instructing them on what medicines to give him and when, Estrith stood to leave. Once more, she felt a hand reach out for hers.

“Don’t go,” Amatus whispered drowsily.

Estrith shook her head, resolved to leave purely because she almost did not want to. “I’ll come back to check on you in the morning.”

Amatus struggled to wrench his eyes open again, revealing a disgruntled sliver of gold and grey. “You haven’t even given me your name yet,” he mumbled in protest. It was a small complaint, but in those words Estrith heard his hidden fear. They both knew there was every chance he might not wake with the dawn.

The promise of gold notwithstanding, she found herself fearing it too.

She disentangled his fingers from hers and placed his hand back on the bed. His eyes drooped shut again. “Survive the night, pretty boy,” she challenged quietly, “and maybe you’ll have it.”

Estrith caught the quirking of the corners of his lips as she turned away, the very smallest of sleepy but undeniably determined smiles.

“Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ummmm, so if this chapter went to plan it would have shown Estrith being sassy to some of the wounded soldiers and downright spiteful to others. I wanted to show her Stormcloak allegiances and lack of regard for anything which doesn't immediately have to do with herself and her own goals. Or something.
> 
> But when I wrote it, it just didn't come out that way and I still don't even know what happened but... yeah. Pretty boy Amatus just popped up out of nowhere in my head, hijacked the entire chapter and I might be slightly in love with him and his stupid, pretty eyes.
> 
> Soooo, sorry not sorry!
> 
> ~ Indie x
> 
> ps. Yes, my dumb ass actually did think it was a good idea to write a 500+ word description of freaking Helgen, of all things. Don't ask me why, I was probably procrastinating from something more important at the time and, since I went through the backwards effort, it's staying too. But yeah I actually am sorry about that one. lol.


End file.
